I left university with
not much to shout about apart from a confusion as to why on earth
people drank the stuff that passed as beer 'down-south.' Before
moving to the Midlands from Yorkshire I'd never felt the need to
drink lager, as far as I was concerned there were two types of beer;
mild and bitter- but what passed for the latter in Brum at the time
rarely made the grade, even for a not overly picky student
wallet/palate.
I ended up working in pubs in Nottingham closely
followed by Australia, where, due to a making the mistake of knowing
how to work a till system, I had to do a shift on my own in a bottle
shop on a Sunday morning. I was bribed with malt whisky, but still
had no idea whatsoever about what I was selling. Luckily nobody came
in to cruelly expose my lack of knowledge so I remained unscathed.
Having resolved to learn something about wine once back in the UK I
ended up managing another pub and discovered the joys of Belgian beer
instead. Not to be foiled, once life took me to London I started work
all keen and bright-eyed in Oddbins, a month before scurrying off to
New Zealand and dragging my girlfriend and best mate round as many
vineyards as I could convince them to tag along to. By this time I
was hooked. Oddbins brought me back to Nottingham and a couple of
years later the girlfriend was dragged off to yet another winery,
this time in Italy, to get married – best man even made it, with
the timely acquisition of a new passport. And so now I run wine
classes for a local college, along with blogging, mainly about beer
due to the addition of a non-canine child to our family and not being
able to drink as much wine, which is a lot less fun on your own!
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